Topology-Incurred Delay for Information Dissemination in Large Multi-Channel Cognitive Radio Networks

Cognitive Radio (CR) networks have become an important component of the modern communication infrastructure due to their capability of improving spectrum usage efficiency by exploiting channels opportunistically. In CR networks, the network topology changes very frequently because of the temporarily available channels and dynamic transmitting parameters (e.g. transmission power and transmitting frequency), which may even result in network disconnectivity from time to time. Hence an interesting and open question is that: are there bounds on end-to-end delay between a source-destination pair with Euclidean distance d apart in such networks? These bounds are required for time-critical applications. This paper first investigates the nature of topology-incurred end-to-end delay in large multi-channel CR networks and then identifies the conditions under which the asymptotic topology-incurred delay scales linearly with the Euclidean distance (d); that is, the conditions under which the end-to-end delay is bounded. The results in this paper are validated through extensive simulations and can advance our understanding of CR network performance.